Happy Crafter: July 2011

Saturday, July 23, 2011

TRIP TO MINNESOTA TO SHAW REUNION

What a great opportunity to spend time with family - meeting new family members and seeing our home before and after our parents lived and played in them.


Shaw Cottage

The way it looks today (2011) - owned and enjoyed by a couple from Arizona
who come for the summer

The home at 441 Dassell Avenue as it looks today (2011)

My home growing up

Goldfinches by Mary Oliver, Poet

In the fields
we let them have---
in the fields
we don't want yet---

where thistles rise
out of the mashlands of spring, and spring open---
each bud
a settlement of riches---

a coin of reddish fire---
the finches
wait for midsummer,
for the long days,

for the brass heat,
for the seeds to begin to form in the hardening thistles,
dazzling as the teeth of mice,
but black,

filling the face of every flower.
Then they drop from the sky.
A buttery gold,
they swing on the thistles, they gather

the silvery down, they carry it
in their finch beaks
to the edges of the fields,
to the trees,

as though their minds were on fire
with the flower of one perfect idea---
and there they build their nests
and lay their pale-blue eggs,

every year,
and every year
the hatchlings wake in the swaying branches,
in the silver baskets,

and love the world.
Is it necessary to say any more?
Have you heard them sing in the wind
above the final fields?
Have you every been so happy in your life?